MARINE SECURITY HANDOFF MOVING FORWARD

Afghan troops step up with mixed results; U.S. officers are cautiously optimistic

“They can bitch all they want. We’re not going back,” Templet said on the radio.

When the Marines patted down a young man who approached them on the road as they interviewed occupants of a nearby home, the Afghan soldier in charge of the search element grew irate. Sgt. Hezbollah (who uses one name) strode over and hollered at the Marines.

“Why did you search them?” he demanded, according to a translation for Templet.

Among themselves, the Marines mockingly called the Afghan sergeant GI Joe. Hezbollah refused to wear a helmet over his Justin Bieber-style hairdo. Instead of ballistic eye protection, he wore flashy sunglasses. “He is garbage,” Templet said.

He gritted his teeth and calmly told the interpreter to let Hezbollah know: “If I need to search the people I am talking to for my own security, I will. Tell him!”

Later, when Hezbollah strolled by munching on a snack he had plucked from a vineyard, the Marine platoon sergeant muttered sarcastically: “Eating grapes on patrol. … Yeah, they’re really going to succeed when we leave. I feel 100 percent confident.”

Betrayal

So-called green-on-blue attacks by disgruntled or turncoat Afghan troops on their international allies are fraying trust at a critical phase in the war. For Camp Pendleton’s 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, an apparent insider attack took a tragic toll on personnel in the Puzeh area of Sangin when three were killed and a fourth wounded — about a quarter of the size of a typical special operations team, not including support troops.

Although initial reports of the incident varied, a critical skills operator on the team who spoke to eyewitnesses said the Marines had just finished a shura security meeting in the predawn darkness Aug. 10 when an Afghan man appeared unescorted at their tactical operations center.

He was dressed like a member of the Afghan Local Police — villagers the Marines train to fight the Taliban. Only Afghans they know and trust are allowed into the inner sanctum of the base, and always with an escort. Gunnery Sgt. Ryan Jeschke, team chief at Puzeh, was immediately suspicious, the operator recounted.

Jeschke brought the Afghan man into the operations center and asked if anyone recognized him. When team leader Capt. Matt Manoukian and others said no, Jeschke led him out to the foyer.

The Afghan man grabbed a rifle and shot Jeschke in the back and continued shooting through the thin plywood into the operations center, fatally wounding Manoukian and Staff Sgt. Sky R. Mote, an explosive ordnance disposal technician.

Within two hours after the mass shooting, the operations center was cleaned of blood and the Marines were back to work, hunting for the attacker and continuing their “village stability operations” mission. The special operations forces team had helped the local militia kill several prominent Taliban commanders in Puzeh that summer. As the deaths of the three Marines underscored, there was much more to be done.

“If you just sit there and dwell on it, it’s only going to get worse,” said the operator, who deployed previously in combat with the three dead Marines and was close friends with them. “It is very traumatic, but the number one point of the team is to accomplish the mission, though it sounds cliché. That’s what all three guys would have wanted.”